600 pages of autograph manuscripts, with 12 watercolors and drawings on lung anatomy and physiology.
Bazin, Antoine Pierre Ernes.
Price: 27500.00 USD
Paris:: circa 1836-1842.
Circa 600 Pages of Unpublished Autograph Manuscripts on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Lungs and the Physiology of Respiration, with Twelve Watercolor Paintings by Albert Jacquemart, from an Almost Completely Undocumented Period in Bazin's Life
Bazin, Antoine-Pierre-Ernest (1807-78). A collection of autograph manuscripts, drawings and watercolor paintings on the anatomy and physiology of the lungs and the physiology of respiration, as listed below. [Paris, 1836-c. 1842] Various sizes. 1 ms. in original wrappers, torn & chipped; the remaining mss. in original unbound state, some soiling and browning, edges of some leaves a little frayed, a few marginal tears. 5 of the watercolors mounted; the remainder loose. Enclosed in two cloth drop-back boxes.
Bazin, the son and grandson of physicians, was born in 1807 in the small town of St. Brice-sous-Bois. He studied medicine in Paris, where he impressed everyone with his brilliance: "named successively a hospital extern and intern, he was taught by Dupuytren, Honore, Rostan, Bricheteau, Delarocque, Maury, Biett, and crowned his internship by obtaining the gold medal at the end of a remarkable examination" (Baudot, p. 176). He received his doctorate in medicine in 1834 with a thesis entitled Recherches sur les lesions de poumon dans les fievres dites essentielles (Researches on lesions of the lung in "essential" fevers), and might then have begun on a career commensurate with his remarkable abilities. However, Bazin was unfortunately possessed of a difficult and overbearing personality, and his "utter lack of tact in dealing with influential colleagues" (Besnier, quoted in Crissy & Parrish, p. 150) caused him to passed over in the agrege examinations of 1835 and 1838, which prevented him from obtaining a teaching post in a university or lycee.
To Bazin these failures were so discouraging that he abandoned all further efforts toward obtaining a teaching position, instead spending the next several years in relative poverty and obscurity, struggling to advance his medical career both in private practice and at various hospitals. Bazin also attempted during this time to found two medical periodicals-- l'Institut medical (first issue 1839) and Repertoire des etudes medicales (first issue 1848); however, both of these ventures were almost immediate failures, due largely to Bazin's lack of capital.
This difficult period in Bazin's life ended in 1847, when he was prevailed upon to accept a post at the Hopital St. Louis; he remained there until his retirement at age 65, and it is there that he began the brilliant and influential dermatological studies for which he is now known. He constructed an elaborate "diathetic" system of dermatologic thought based on the idea that skin disorders were not diseases as such but only the visible manifestations of a few underlying pathological states; this theory enjoyed wide acceptance in France and Great Britain prior to the rise of the germ theory of disease in the 1870s. Bazin published over a dozen books on dermatological subjects, the most important being his influential Lecons theoriques et cliniques sur les affections cutanees de nature arthritique et dartreuse (1860); these, coupled with his great skills as a clinician and teacher, made him one of the great dermatological authorities of his age. His name survives today in the term "Bazin's disease," an alternative name for erythema induratum (see G-M 4051).
Although quite prolific in the years after 1850, when his fortunes were secure, Bazin published almost nothing in the unsettled and virtually undocumented period of his life between 1835 and 1847. A search of the sources available to us, including the online databases, NUC and contemporary obituaries (see below), has turned up references only to the two failed periodicals, his agrege theses (Quels sont les caracteres distinctifs de la contagion et de l'infection [1835] and Determiner ce qu'il faut entendre par maladies lymphatiques [1838]), and two unnamed memoirs on the structure of the lung (1836) and the connection between the spinal cord and spinal nerves (1840), both of which are mentioned only in a footnote to Baudot's obituary (p. 177). However, these twelve "lost" years were a more productive period for Bazin than the record of his publications indicates--the group of unpublished manuscripts and drawings offered here, which date from between 1839 and circa 1842, show that Bazin continued to rework and expand his writings on the lung, hoping to make his name as a specialist in the anatomy and physiology of respiration.
Bazin's investigations on the lung are of great interest, particularly since they date from a time when common pulmonary illnesses were beginning to be diagnosed with precision, thanks to Laennec's stethoscope (1819). This manuscript collection is made up of the following:
(1) Recherches sur la structure intime du poumon de l'homme et des animaux vertebres, suivis de considerations sur les fonctions et la pathologie de cet organe (Research on the interior structure of the lung in man and vertebrates, followed by thoughts on the functions and pathology of this organ). June 3, 1839. Autograph notebook of 56 pages in folio, extensively revised by the author with erasures, pastings, notes, etc., dedicated to the history and criticism of the opinions of medical authors from antiquity to the nineteenth century, and submitted to the Institut Royal de France, whose stamp appears on the title. Also on the title is a note in the hand of noted French neurologist Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (1794-1867), a commissioner of the Institut: "Mrs. Dumeril, de Blainville, Serres, Flourens: Commissaires." In the introduction to this memoir Bazin explained the origin of his research in this way:
"The desire to acquire precise information on the original seat and the development of pulmonary phthisis and asthma directed me to research on the interior structure of the lung. . . ."
This and the following memoir may have been written for publication in the Memoires of the Institut; however, Bazin's name does not appear at all in the Memoires' indexes for the period 1836-57, and we have every reason to believe that it is unpublished.
(2) The interior structure of the lung in man and vertebrates. Second memoir presented to the Institute. 2 undated autograph notebooks of 15 and 13 pages in folio, with corrections, pastings, etc. as above, representing two parts of the manuscript. "Commissioners Blainville, Flourens, Serres" inscribed in another hand on p. 1 of Part 2.
(3) 12 watercolors (from 2 to 5 drawings per page), by Albert Jacquemart (1808-75), dated 1836, representing both gross and fine anatomical structures in the lung and other respiratory apparatus with notes and commentary by Bazin: windpipe of a gazelle injected with mercury; lung of a kestrel and a pigeon; lung of a Muscovy duck; lung of a girl who died at the Hotel-Dieu in March 1836; man, bronchial branches/tubes injected with mercury; bronchial endings of a 4-month old fetus; bronchial endings of a calf's lung; lung of an otter, etc. At least six of the drawings were prepared to illustrate the second part of Bazin's "De la structure du poumon de l'homme et des animaux vertebres" (no. 2); the drawings are referenced in marginal notes in the manuscript. Included with the Jacquemart watercolors are an unsigned watercolor and three black pencil drawings without captions.
Jacquemart, a painter of flowers, also worked on the reproduction of subjects in botany, entomology, conchology, and medicine (cf. Benezit VI, p. 51). Color xeroxes of his watercolors are included with this description.
(4) Recherches sur la structure intime des organes respiratoires. 40pp. in folio, unbound. Undated, but not earlier than 1841, since a bibliographical citation on the first page refers to a book published in that year. A scholarly review and critique of medical writings on the lung from antiquity to the time of writing; among the authors discussed are Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, Empedocles, Vesalius, Harvey, Malpighi, Willis, Ruysch, Bidloo, Duverney, Haller, John Hunter, Soemmerring and Reisseisen.
(5) Breathing apparatus of the lion. Autograph manuscript of 20pp. in folio and in quarto with 5 drawings by the author in pencil and ink: posterior bronchial plexus, anastamosis of the bronchial artery with the pulmonary artery, etc. Numerous corrections by the author. In a paper folder which contains a portion of another manuscript by Bazin entitled "De la structure intime des organes respiratoires des animaux vertebres," and beginning "Il y a presque vingt cinq ans que j'ai co[mmence] cette Čtude. . . ." (It has been 25 years since I began this research. . . ). Right margin of this ms. page trimmed, affecting text.
(6) A large collection of notes on lectures and dissections, in a paper folder entitled "Notes sur l'appareil respiratoire" (Notes on the respiratory apparatus). Undated, but 1842 or later. Circa 500 pages in quarto, mostly filed in 42 sub-groups, each with its own folder; there are also several loose unfiled sheets. Most of the sub-groups are devoted to authors: Aristotle, Plato, Galen, Empedocles, Harvey, Aranzio, Malpighi, Lower, Hunter, Cuvier, Laennec, Seymour, Mayo, Tiedeman, Spallanzani, Poli, Bourgery, Milne-Edwards (whom he criticizes for not having been aware of the "rather numerous preparations that I left in the comparative anatomy collections in 1839"), etc. The remaining groups contain dissection notes: procedures used on a very young human embryo; pleurisy; bird autopsies; notes on the breathing apparatus of several mammals (with some sketches). Also included in this document is the manuscript of the first lesson of a zoology course taught by Bazin. All of the materials in (6) were probably written in preparation for various lecture courses taught by Bazin during the 1840s or later; Crissey (p. 151) notes Bazin's habit of opening each year's Lecons with a caustic and contemptuous survey of the work of his predecessors.
This collection is among the largest collections of autograph manuscripts by a single author on a medical subject that we have handled in 40 years of trading and it is only one to contain paintings of this quality.
Some of the manuscripts described above may have been intended for publication in one or the other of Bazin's failed medical journals, both of which are extraordinarily rare: neither is cited in NUC, or in the OCLC database. Besnier, in his obituary of Bazin, stated that he knew of only one copy of Bazin's Institut medical (at the Bibliotheque nationale de France); he also noted that the later Repertoire des Čtudes medicales ceased publication after only six issues. Baudot, "Le Docteur Bazin, sa vie et ses oeuvres," Arch. gen. med., 7th series, 1 (1879): 175-98. Besnier, "…Eloge de P.-A.-E. Bazin," Annales de dermatologie et de syphilographie 9 (1877-78): 467-79. Crissey & Parrish, Dermatology and Syphilology of the 19th Century (1981) pp. 150-62.
